New Loyola MBA class to turn classroom into boardroom

Loyola University New Orleans’ College of Business is partnering with South Coast Angel Fund to provide students with real world experience in equity financing of entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurial Consulting, taught in the MBA program by Brett Matherne, Ph.D., offers students a unique opportunity to play a part in the investment exploration process of the South Coast Angel Fund.

“This is an amazing opportunity,” Matherne said. “These students are not dealing with hypothetical widgets; they are working with real investment decisions. They will be involved in evaluating presentations of perspective businesses, providing market, financial and legal analysis that will be used in South Coast’s decision making process. This level of involvement is unprecedented for angel funds or venture capital funds.”

Students will learn the role of a consultant before engaging with the angel fund and its potential investment, as well as valuation methods, equity investment process, term sheet clauses, and due diligence process. The course, created in conjunction with Loyola graduate and South Coast Angel Fund Managing Director Clayton White, M.B.A. ’93, J.D. ’07, is designed to elevate the outcomes delivered by students by partnering with South Coast Angel Fund and turning their class projects from hypothetical cases to “real-time, real-world” analyses.

Loyola joins other prestigious universities, including Harvard, Wharton, Oxford, and Dartmouth, in offering a private equity entrepreneurship class. But, according to Matherne, what sets Loyola’s program apart is the level of student involvement.

“Most, if not all, of the other programs require students to perform market and financial analysis of previous private equity investments. Our students not only do that, but are involved ‘beyond the curtain,’ in meetings with private equity partners while the real decisions are made.”

South Coast Angel Fund LLC is a member-managed angel capital fund designed to utilize the capital, resources, and expertise of its members to achieve returns from its investments in entrepreneurial, early-stage companies, primarily within Louisiana and the Gulf Coast community.